


Roughshod Through The Borderlands

by Phrenotobe



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, An astounding number of imps, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-12 15:03:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5670214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phrenotobe/pseuds/Phrenotobe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The forest grows dark and green and just a little bit wild for all her tending, the scent of pine needles and the honest sniff of dirt that makes her feel that little bit more settled. Twigs crackle underfoot as she picks her feet up from a walk to a jog, and soon she is running.<br/>The forest closes overhead, snug and dim.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roughshod Through The Borderlands

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Stripe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stripe/gifts).



The summons comes by bird, gold leaf in a magpie's beak. It arrives before the sun properly rises, the scrabble and scuff on the sill enough to wake Jade up, and she reaches to push it away with a belligerent shove as it skitters just far enough away to make a grab impossible. Rising with vengance in her heart, Jade scuffles with the magpie for a minute before she manages to retrieve the card, peeling the shining edges off in one swirling piece to give back as a present for her courier.  
Jade stretches with the peeled card in her mouth (Her job is hell upon her joints without proper preparation) before giving it a proper look.  
Jade isn't much of a lumberjack, not really; her favourite things to do are constructing things, taking long walks through the forests and thinking about things in the privacy and long periods of time alone that being a Ranger gives. Cities are too dense, and islands too remote – She has lived in a lot of places, and nothing quite has the right feel as a cabin in the woods. The low speed internet, albeit frustrating, does a good job of strengthening the soul.  
It is true that forest rangers are known for their hardiness and impressive stature, and Jade is no exception; long-limbed, dark and beautiful, she has the easy stride of somebody never told to hold themselves in and be more mannerly, the brilliant green of her eyes a striking feature. Morning stretches follow morning shifts, and for half an hour she extends into paws and fluff with half an ear on the radio, relaxing in her own way as most relax with a morning paper.  
Coming into lycanthropy isn't a common occurance, and the golden chain and heavy coin that hangs around Jade's neck is a family heirloom, passed down from her grandfather. At some point in the family history, perhaps in the sixteenth or seventeenth century (official records are thin) a Harley made a pact with the fey and was rewarded with gold in return for service.  
The coin isn't the important part of the pact, and the coin will always somehow return if stolen, sold or lost, but it is a treasure that Jade isn't in any hurry to lose. Stamped with a golden sun on one side, it reminds her of happy memories, the eagerness with which she threw herself into the job. To humans, she is Ms Harley, but the fey call her the Seelie Wolf.  
The card asks – nay, demands an audience with the seelie King for a quest too precious to be told upon paper. The castle is three days away by horse, and perhaps a day and a half by a decent motorbike but Jade is faster than both, if she starts out early enough in the day.  
Jade squints at the sunrise, faint enough that the interior of her cabin is dark, and uses up the last of her powder to make a light to dress by. The generator is still outside, and takes a good half hour to warm up. She picks her best; forester's green, good for within the Hedge and without, a stout pair of boots and a favour tied upon her arm. It tickles her that the King would think to send a card along, but fey are notorious for extravagance, and so Jade sets out to the nearest Hedge.  
The forest grows dark and green and just a little bit wild for all her tending, the scent of pine needles and the honest sniff of dirt that makes her feel that little bit more settled. Twigs crackle underfoot as she picks her feet up from a walk to a jog, and soon she is running.  
The forest closes overhead, snug and dim. 

It is unfair to say that Jade falls; she jumps wholeheartedly, and rolls down the hill with the gallant fearlessness of one who knows every bump and divot in the landscape. But if she was to admit that perhaps she did fall, it would not be the first time – the devilishly handsome scratch on one bicep shaped like a star is proof enough of her bravery. At the bottom of the hill she picks herself up, crackles her joints with verve and heads onward into the Hedge's shifty embrace.

Behind the Hedge is difficult to navigate if you aim for it head-on, so Jade strolls through the goblin market at her liesure, enjoying the scents first and the attractions second. A crowd of mixed company asks for her hair, her fingernails, beseeches Jade for mere eighths of her soul, but Jade doesn't even hand them a hello, just a smile or two to ease her passage. The goblins and crows look forlorn; the kelpie sourly splashes the surface of the barrel beside her. 

The edge of the market backs on to unseelie territory, and like all unseelie business it is more jagged, more toothy and more unsettling than reality really ever needs to be. Seelie knights have no business in Unseelie lands, and the hound of the Seelie even less, but it'll cut right across the courts and have her at the palace promptly. A woodcutter should never fear the forest, and a wolf should know it well. 

Though Jade could never be accused of anything like slinking, she does take pains to be quiet. Above, the clouds twist out of shape like glitched artwork designed for melodic rock, snow caps upon mountains seeming to pour ever so slightly when not watched. Under the tree tops, Jade flicks open her lighter and strikes the hammer to make a spark. 

The flame brings clarity with it, bending north. Jade follows, soon forgetting she isn't really supposed to be welcome. Time bends as the trees do, under invisible winds, and the day seems to sweep in ungainly reverse. 

The hunting horn makes her drop the lighter.

Too soon, the sticks underfoot snap with the noise of merry ignition, and she gropes through the flames to pick up the lighter and leave. But inky eyes and gleaming arrowtips shadow in a neat circle, drawing closer as Jade stomps out the flame and curses a blue streak. 

“I call upon the right of-” Jade starts, and an arrow sings past her ear.  
Jade's fist clenches around the lighter, her head turning sharply as she sets her gaze upon the offending imp.  
“You got it,” Jade says, “I know I brought it, but buster, you got it!”

The whirl of the battle isn't worth much mention; the arrows fly and the imps run, and the dog of the Seelie charges through the chaos, using it to advance deeper into the forest, to outrun to where the trees stop curling and the land stops breaking abruptly into puzzle pieces and sharp, sudden rocks. 

On the other side Jade stops, turns around and sits, watching the imps fumble to a pause, blowing on their fingers with comical rage as they slam into the invisible barrier and have to stop. A few more arrows fly, melting under the sunlight, and Jade barks once, and trots away. 

The castle is familiar, and Jade slips inside without much of a fanfare. The King keeps their castle cold, enough that Jade is glad of the extra fluff. Directed along by soldiers to the tactician's room, the King rests her weapon on the table and leans. She takes a face that Jade knows well, and the round and soft cheeks of Rose are at odds with the trappings of war below the collar. Rose is not so tall, not so broad at the shoulder. Two sets of seven years ago, it would make Jade tremble, but now it is just a feature, a gesture of goodwill from an alien being that doesn't quite know how to put humans at ease.  
Within the keep, Jade spends her time talking about what she knows; the movements of the imps she has just met, and things the King asks about the forest in season. She isn't to ride out with the hunt, at least not until most of the imps forget (Two or three months, perhaps) and is to return upon notice, though when, the King leaves to be vague. They finally part with a kiss upon the cheek.

The woods are still the best way around, and Jade clenches her teeth as she dives back into the woods, running without pause until her muscles burn. 

On the other side of the hedge from the one Jade went into, street lights hum with electricity, lighting up the road as Jade staggers onward to a safehouse. The creatures she has met past the hedge don't play nice on either side, and as far as Jade is concerned it would be just great to not think about inter-pixie politics for a while.  
She crosses the empty road – one in the morning being a good time to meander across seeing as there isn't any traffic – and turns into the outer suburbs, her especially good sense of smell picking up flowers and the day old stems of trimmed grass on the lawns. In an array of picket fences during the day, she'd expect to get turned around and confused by the sight, but she can tread it now with her eyes closed, following the incense that spools smoke in curls from a seemingly prosaic house.

Jade pulls herself into Rose's house through the partially open window, knocking over a plant pot on the way. The night is crisp with late frost, and Rose puts down her knitting abruptly as she hears the crash in order to properly click her tongue and scowl. It doesn't last.

It is wonderful to see Rose, properly short and properly round, scented like weird, musky perfume and the incense she burns every day at the window to remind Jade how to come home. Jade closes her arms around Rose's shoulders, huffing a long sigh of longing fondness. Rose, for her part, does her best to rise on her feet to meet her, but she is missing just more than a foot of height. 

“I'll go turn on the kettle and brew something for both of us,” Rose says as they part.  
Jade, though still dashing as ever, is a little heavy-shouldered as she stands.  
“Thanks,” she says, grateful for little touches of comfort, “I'm really tired.”  
She flops happily into a chair, burrowing into the cushions but unable to get fully comfortable. Pulling a face, she sits up to rearrange cushions, her legs over one arm and her head tucked up against the angle of the seat back, her arms laid wherever they fit. Thus arranged, she manages a short and sleepy smile and a double-barreled thumbs up when Rose re-enters with something hot in each hand. 

“Are you hurt?” Rose asks, giving Jade a wary eye, “That doesn't look at all comfortable.”  
“I dunno,” Jade says, standing up and reaching around to prod at her own jacket back, fingers dipping into the notches and scratches it is dappled with. With everything that went on today, Jade guesses honest exhaustion and an inability to sit still, but she also doesn't have eyes in the back of her head.  
Rose catches Jade's arm before she trips over herself in her urge to chase her own metaphorical tail and falls, putting her shoulder under the curl of Jade's arm and pointing her into the kitchen. Jade goes to park herself upon the table, resting most of her weight upon one edge as she sits. She made the table herself out of hardwood, and gives it a tired, fond pat on the varnished surface.  
“I figured I was okay, but fey arrows melt, you know how it is. Can you look for me?”  
“Very well,” Rose says, “Off with your jacket, then.” 

Rose waits impatiently, rolling up on her toes as Jade shimmies out of her jacket and drops it on the floor. Something in her pocket clangs heavy on the tile, and Rose gives Jade a wary glance.  
“Sword,” Jade admits, the little fish-bigger fish gesture conveying conservation of mass via density accurately, if a little out of mode. She then giggles as Rose pushes up the back of Jade's shirt to look. 

The greater majority of the arrows seem to have been caught in the coat as they should, and Jade shifts lightly underneath Rose's touch, the cold but soft splay of her neat hands as she looks for anything out of place. Scratches don't particularly faze either of them, but Jade twitches as Rose prods a particular point.  
“Yeah, that hurts,” Jade admits, and Rose nudges the offending patch again sharply, just to make sure.  
“Still hurts,” Jade repeats, and obliges as Rose tips her further forward with a short shove to give it a proper look, “I'm careful! But I did run a lot.”  
Jade braces on the table, calling on all of her stillness. Rose's cool hand is tender then instead, feeling out the shape and going quiet as she does. She halts, fingertips so light that it makes Jade's mouth twist with ticklish humour.  
“Can I have a diagnosis or should I flex?” Jade asks, still patiently waiting.  
“Hush,” Rose says.  
“Oh, come on,” Jade shoots back, “It isn't mysterious when you just don't say anything!”  
As if to prove a point, Rose fills in with a short hum to show she listens, walking around the kitchen table to pick up a pot of oil from the corner near the microwave. It smells strongly of herbs, as many odd concoctions do.  
“I'm not sure,” Rose admits, “But if I have anything to do with it, it'll be going.”

She draws a symbol on Jade's warm skin with the oil, circling the place where it aches, and then draws the twin of that symbol upon the kitchen table. With a last prod at the tabletop, the ache drains away and a sickly knot appears in the table surface, drying and cracking up.  
“Oh,” Jade said, “I thought it was just a regular thing.”  
“That wouldn't have healed,” Rose says softly. She hops up onto the table, self-satisfied and fond, and tucks herself into Jade's side.  
Jade chuffs a breath across Rose's scalp, partially a sigh, partially a laugh, and Rose picks up one of her hands to better place it around herself and patting it, to ask it to stay.  
“Just in my usual line of business,” Rose says, amicably dry in tone.  
“I missed you,” Jade says, “Can I stay over?”  
Rose nods, and angles her face up to kiss her.  
“Yes,” she says, “Though you'll need to have a bath. You smell of dogs and dried corriander.”


End file.
